


Janet Drake and the Teenaged Vigilante

by NotaRobin (Chaerring)



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 09:35:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18617944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/NotaRobin
Summary: Red Robin, at the end of the world, goes back in time and lands on his mother's dining room table on a rare occasion she is actually home.





	Janet Drake and the Teenaged Vigilante

**Author's Note:**

> I will be up front and warn two things: 1) There was no beta, or even a second reader to catch my mistakes. 2) This may never get another chapter. It's a great idea and interesting premise I saw someone prompt on the Tim Drake discord, but this is not entirely their prompt and I'm bad at making complete stories.

Janet contemplated the young man in her guest bedroom. He had appeared during the middle of dinner, straight onto her beautiful dining room table. Thank goodness she'd gone for the heavy solid built wood instead of the strange modern style sweeping through some of Gotham. He was dressed like that ridiculous bat-figure parading around at night causing problems for the police, but he was much younger than Janet had ever thought of a vigilante being. You could see it around his mouth and across his forehead. He lacked the fine stress lines age brought to everyone, even if his brow was as furrowed as an old man's. He had been terrified, too. Another thing she didn't associate with vigilantes; they caused fear and turmoil and did not feel it themselves in her mind.

Here she was staring down at a teenager, maybe early college or late high school it was difficult to tell in his fine features. It was bizarrely like staring into a fun house mirror. This vigilante was of her. If his slight panic and identification of herself and her husband when he tried to apologize for ruining their dinner and excuse himself hadn't given him away, the way she stripped his mask once he'd collapsed certainly had. Her son was fascinated, of course. She had had to store the bloody, torn, and scorched costume and various gadgets in the same room with the young man to keep Timothy away from them even though she didn't want to give this intruder access to his tools when he woke up. It was the only way she could guard them both at the same time. Timothy and this teen too would likely be able to fool Jack in a heartbeat. Her husband trusted too easily and discounted the benefits of critical thinking.

The doctor she had discreetly employed to treat the teenager had many interesting things to tell her. He'd been doing this a long time, the teen. The age of certain scars indicated he'd been subjected to and exposed to violence for something close to a decade if not exactly that. She could see evidence herself during the doctor's examination, how scars in his skin must have stretched as he grew. One had been pointed out on his abdomen, a probable splenectomy, prompting extra warnings to watch closely for an infection and a suggestion she pay a bit more money for a check-up in a couple of days. She hadn't minded. The doctor was competent and if her theories were correct it was likely she would be cancelling her flight and not letting the teen out of her sight.

How had he grown up this way? If she was correct- if this was who she thought it was- how the hell did this happen? Her son, her Timothy grown up to be some rooftop running costumed vigilante freak show covered in old scars and evidence of suffering at an age when he should just be nearing adulthood. He should be drinking beer and surviving the odd scare with reckless driving, out with friends, not time-traveling for fuck's sake. What was she going to do about this? Something had obviously gone wrong. She didn't feel the need to coddle her little Tim by any means, but clearly she'd made mistakes. She would have to convince this future version of her son to tell her what they were and devise some kind of strategy to avoid them.

Anything that recreated this version of Tim out of her darling boy sleeping two bedrooms over was absolutely unacceptable. She demanded better of herself, and of her son. Jack, she'd figure out where he could help, as well. Even if Tim looked like her, she knew he had softness, trust in him like his father did. Was that how this happened? Did some vigilante take advantage of her son's trust? His brilliant mind? She needed to stop asking herself these questions and make a list to ask this older Timothy when he woke up.

 

Tim woke up. Usually this would be a universally agreed upon good sign. Tim wasn't so sure what universe he was in or how much he'd agree with anyone in it, so he laid still and took stock, habitually keeping his breathing even and slow as it had been before he'd come back to consciousness. He tested his fingers and toes with the most minimal movements he could and found them in working order, this he would take as a good sign. The feeling of his missing domino and uniform were much less welcome. He didn't have a shirt, but he had the familiar lingering sting under his skin that came from disinfectant and the itch of bandages around his torso indicating he'd been treated. The lack of sounds indicated he was likely not in a hospital. No IV or monitors hooked up to his arms, no needles he could feel.

Ever so cautiously, he cracked an eye and immediately wished he hadn't because his mother was staring at him. Tim wouldn't say the middle of the Drake family dining room table was the worst place he could land back in time after the end of his world, but he definitely wasn't going to rank it in his top ten if he had a choice about his time stop and location. First things first then, escape Drake Manor. Though, compared to Wayne Manor it was more escape Drake Enormous House than Manor. He was stalling.

"You're stalling, Timothy."

His eyes opened, more out of some ingrained blood borne obedience to that voice than any kind of desire to actually come out of his shell and face her.

"I was assessing my surroundings."

Tim carefully levers himself up in the bed, adjusting the pillow behind his back so he can sit up and face her. If he needs to, he thinks he can make a run for it, but he has no resources here, isn't even sure what the weather is like or what time of year it is. It was better to gain information and then see at what stage the formation of the Justice League was and how he could prepare them to stop what happens ....he doesn't even know what year it is or exactly how long he has to work with to prevent the apocalypse.

His mother looks entirely unimpressed. It was the same expression she wore with members of the board when they tried to convince her of something at a social gathering when she could be spending time networking with others she didn't work with day to day. If he gave himself room to think about it he would have to admit it wasn't the expression he'd hoped to see Janet Drake have if she ever saw him again. He doesn't give himself room to think about it.

"You're from the future."

She's not asking a question and Tim has good odds on her already going over his tool belts and seeing technology that could only be from the future, or another planet. Which, some of it admittedly had alien origins.

"One that ended."

"Is it usual for young men to don costumes and parade about in the future?" Janet's voice is mild as a summer breeze and Tim thinks abruptly of Gotham Pride and his own attendance last year instead of the Red Robin uniform she's referencing.

"More common than it is now. Speaking of, how old is your actual son right now?"

Janet's lips purse and Tim can tell she doesn't want his younger self brought into the conversation, not even a little bit.

"Nine."

He thinks back. The only time he really saw his parents that year was for a few short weeks during the summer when it was too hot in the desert for their archaeological site. They left at the end of August and didn't return until after Christmas thanks to a large snowstorm in Gotham preventing their flight in for the holidays.

"It's early August then." He says it absently, but her eyes narrow and she nods taking more from the comment than he meant, but he's not sure what. "Thank you for getting me patched up. I could have handled it when I woke up, but it was probably better done sooner than that."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
